Ran out of room in the review space...again.
For starters, on a game that has looping sound on the preloader, it's always a good idea to have a button that toggles mute (ESPECIALLY if it's a huge filesize, where the player will be subjected to it for a prolonged amount of time.) The music loop wasn't particularly annoying to me, but it's always a conscientious option, as there are some who would disagree.
One way around it, though, since you have our control options there, with our protagonist chasing an antagonist, is you could use the preloader space to provide us with an interactive warm-up of a minigame. But a mute button would be easier to program to accommodate the whiners. :P
The control scheme with the mouse takes a little getting used to. But once you learn to concentrate on the red line-of-sight, it gets a little easier. It's a recurring theme throughout the game where it's pivotal to your survival to know exactly where on the street your player is, and that's tricky to get a hang of since the camera is terminally side-scroller on a plane that contains depth. It would be merciful for us if the angle was viewed higher, looking down at the player...or if you REALLY wanted to be expiremental with flash, take from Einhander, an underrated Playstation 3D side scroller, and consistently switch up the perspectives, while never taking away from the fact that it's a side scroller.
The point of view makes it difficult to navigate with the mouse when the landmines came in. Instinctively, I wanted to switch play-styles without losing progress I've gained, so I seeked out the pause button for the menu. The "P" for pause was there, but it simply froze the game. It would be a great feature to have a menu where you could swap out play-styles without disrupting the whole game...like say you've tried keyboard and decided you wanted to give mouse a try.
It wasn't until the barrier section that I finally figured out that the health was indicated with the score, and similar to Da Pink Knight, also parallelled with what power ups you were granted. It's a good system that rewards the player with incentive to keep as shiny and untouched as possible, but it's not clearly established. Like even just an arrow that laid it straight for us at the very beginning WHILE we're getting used to the controls would've sufficed. "See this? This is your score. The more you got, the beefier you get. Don't let it drop to zero. Off you go." dusts off it's hands and let's you play the game.
*sigh*...I'm going to run out of review space...this review window's open WHILE I'm playing.
The music is actually pretty awesome. It gets you pumped, and it's remeniscent of arcade games, especially with the inclusion of dynamic sound effects that almost seem to be a part of the remix of the song you're listening to. Like the "Honk...Honnnk" going with the beat, and the whiplashes and shit. It only adds to the awesome. However, since it's ABSOLUTELY important to pay attention to where the red line-of-sight is, it keeps your eyes off of your character and the score-board more often than not. When you take damage, the little "Kzzzkkt" is barely audible when you take a hit. There were also missed opportunities for the jet-boost noise, and the gun SFX on the double-barrelled powerup don't match with the rate of fire...in other words; there are some SFX that are just right, but there are others that need to catch up to par with the appropriate ones.
Visually, I was taken off guard by the visuals. You had submitted 3D material as early as 2003, and it shows you've been pumping some polygonal iron. I was immediately reminded of Einhander, stated earlier, with the immersive bridge/tunnel thing the character had to pass through early on. While I already mentioned my beef with the fixed POV, the wall/barrier sequence was a little disorientating at first with the collision detection of the character. Sometimes it felt like a coin toss, and other times I accept responsiblity for being too slow to get to the weak-point. But everything looks great! I especially like the epic power-up vignettes.
Great Expirement! 5